Following DNA analysis over the last ten years, the phylogenetic tree of the placental Mammals has been drastically rewritten. Elephants and manatees for instance were previously thought to be ungulates (like cows and horses etc). They have now been shifted right to the other side of the tree along with oddbods such as the sloths and armadillos. As a result of this and other changes, the Ungulates are not now considered a clade.

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Even in the early part of this millennium, which I consider to be recent, the following (in broad strokes) was how the placental mammals were divided up by phylogenetic relationship:

There were two Magnorders: Xenarthra and Epitheria.

Magnorder Xenarthra was various weird stuff like armadillos, pangolins, tree sloths, anteaters.

Magnorder Epitheria was everything else, including:

Primates, bats, treeshrews, colugos in one bucket (Archonta)

Hedgehogs, moles, shrews, tenrecs, golden moles in one bucket (Lipotyphla)

Carnivores in their own bucket (Carnivora)

Rodents, rabbits, elephant shrews in a bucket (Anagaloidea)

And in the final big bucket (Ungulata): whales, pigs, camels, cows, elephants, hyraxes, manatees, rhinos, horses, aardvarks etc.

Srsly this was state of the art in 2004.

Much of this had to be thrown out following a series of DNA studies starting in about 2005. Although there have been revisions and adjustments, the changes I’ve described here are not now controversial. A recent (FREE!) paper on the topic is The Interrelationships of Placental Mammals and the Limits of Phylogenetic Inference by Tarver et al
https://gbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/2/330

DNA analysis has forced the following changes:

CHANGE 1

Elephants, aardvarks, hyraxes, manatees have nothing to do with the Ungulates.
Elephant shrews have nothing to do with the rodents and rabbits.
Golden moles and tenrecs have nothing to do with the hedgehogs and moles and stuff in Lipotyphia.

ALL of that stuff was found to be more related to the batshit weirdo Magnorder Xenarthra, with the armadillos! This must be the single biggest shift in the phylogeny of the placental mammals that has occurred in my lifetime. To find out that the elephants are not with the ungulates but right over on the other side of the tree, that’s amazing.

SO: that whole set of quite different groups (elephants, aardvarks, hyraxes, manatees, tenrecs, elephant shrews, golden moles and friends) form a new clade called Afrotheria. Afrotheria and Xenarthra are now in a new clade called Atlantogenata.

All of this punches holes in the validity of Magnorder Epitheria, so it is probably going into the wastebasket of phylogenetic history as well. The suggested name for the clade containing all placentals except for the new weirdo clade Atlantogenata is clade Boreoeutheria.

The remaining changes are less momentous but still interesting.

CHANGE 2

Bats are no longer thought to be close to primates, colugos and treeshrews, so Archonta is not a thing. The new clade Boreoeutheria is split into two, now:

Euarchontoglires, containing primates, colugos, treeshrews and the old Anagaloidea (rabbits and rodents)

Laurasiatheria: containing all of the other Boreoeutherians

CHANGE 3

This is not so big, but the fact that tenrecs and golden moles have been moved way over the other side of the table kind of destroys Lipotyphla’s validity. The stuff that was NOT moved (hedgehogs, moles, proper shrews) are now in a clade called Eulipotyphla, under Laurasiatheria.

CHANGE 4

We’ve been moving a truckload of animals over to the Xenarthran side of the table but we are now going to bring one back.
The pangolins were found to be closely related to the Carnivores.
It is easy to see why people got this one so wrong for so long. The Pangolin looks and acts a lot more like an armadillo than a tiger or a grizzly bear.
But the DNA analysis solidly reckons that the pangolins and Carnivores are close cousins.
The clade Carnivora and the clade Pholidota (with the pangolins) together now make the clade Ferae.

CHANGE 5

The changes I’ve mentioned so far have been fairly well accepted now.

There is continuing discussion about how to arrange the various major clades within Laurasiatheria.

The major clades are Ferae (pangolins and Carnivores), Perissodactyla (odd-toed ungulates such as horses and rhinos), Chiroptera (bats), Cetartiodactyla (whales and even-toed ungulates such as cows, sheep, hippos), and Eulipotyphla (hedgehogs, shrews, moles).

Various schemes have been published in the last few years but one possibility is that the Ferae and Perissodactyls are more closely related to each other than they are to the Cetartiodactyla. This means, for instance, that the horse is closer to the tiger than it is to the cow. The Ferae and Perissodactyla would together be lumped as Zooamata. If this scheme were accepted it would really be the nail in the coffin of the Ungulates as a meaningful group.

Hard to keep up with all this animal identity politics.

Bubblecar said:

Hard to keep up with all this animal identity politics.

It keeps taxonomists in werk.

So 200 years of skeleton studies may well have been a waste of time. Well, not completely. Some people got to practice drawing and stippling. And it kept vast numbers of descriptive stamp collectors off the streets.

Michael V said:

So 200 years of skeleton studies may well have been a waste of time.

A grim assessment.

roughbarked said:

It keeps taxonomists in werk.

Taxonomic werk, or “twerk” as it is called these days.

They are just tidying things up from the days when physical appearance determined the clade in which they were placed. There is so much more that can test ancestry these days and therefore overturn past assumptions. Can’t have science being knowingly wrong.

Good-bye ungulates
Hello Boreoeutheria………

Nah!! They have to come up with a name that works in song……….

Bubblecar said:

Hard to keep up with all this animal identity politics.

I agree. Scientific names change too fast.
Goodbye Reptilia, hello Sauropsida
Goodbye Chelonia, hello Testudines
Etc.

On the ungulates, all I can add is that there has been debate over whether to include the hippo with the whales or not. If they get rid of Cetacea as well then I’m going to hold a protest march.

mollwollfumble said:

Bubblecar said:

Hard to keep up with all this animal identity politics.

I agree. Scientific names change too fast.
Goodbye Reptilia, hello Sauropsida
Goodbye Chelonia, hello Testudines
Etc.

On the ungulates, all I can add is that there has been debate over whether to include the hippo with the whales or not. If they get rid of Cetacea as well then I’m going to hold a protest march.

Too late for that to save Pluto………..

mollwollfumble said:

On the ungulates, all I can add is that there has been debate over whether to include the hippo with the whales or not. If they get rid of Cetacea as well then I’m going to hold a protest march.

I thought your knees were shot?

mollwollfumble said:

Bubblecar said:

Hard to keep up with all this animal identity politics.

I agree. Scientific names change too fast.
Goodbye Reptilia, hello Sauropsida
Goodbye Chelonia, hello Testudines
Etc.

On the ungulates, all I can add is that there has been debate over whether to include the hippo with the whales or not. If they get rid of Cetacea as well then I’m going to hold a protest march.

Can’t argue with the DNA evidence.

party_pants said:

Can’t argue with the DNA evidence.

blink

Have you been asleep for the last thirty years?

Bye bye love
Bye bye Ungulates
Hello loneliness
I think I’m-a gonna cry-y

Bubblecar said:

Bye bye love
Bye bye Ungulates
Hello loneliness
I think I’m-a gonna cry-y

Nice

Bubblecar said:

Bye bye love
Bye bye Ungulates
Hello loneliness
I think I’m-a gonna cry-y

:D

http://www.onezoom.org , which is a lovely resource, has largely adopted the scheme I’ve described here, except in that they show the Afrotherians (elephants etc) diverging from the rest of the mammals slightly before the divergence of Xenartha.

And when I say slightly, I mean 98.9 million years ago versus 98.7 million years ago.

It might ultimately be fair enough to say that this was a genuine simultaneous triple partitition.